The Presidential Oath - messed up? Is President Obama the President or not?

[daleduke17]

"This celebration is costing too much!" "The President isn't being concerned about his safety!"

Isn't that a valid complaint? Bush's inauguration didn't even cost half as much as Obama's.

"Taxpayer dollars at waste!"

Yet another valid complaint. I didn't want my money spent on all of that extravagance, especially since the economy is in the toilet and the country is in a several trillion dollar deficit.

Fox News is sometimes right, you know?

[Pedersen]

Bush's inauguration didn't even cost half as much as Obama's.

I'm sorry, but that is incorrect. First Source, others are easy to find. When comparing the costs of the 05 inauguration with the 09 inauguration, the comparison is made to the amount of private donations spent on Bush's parties (not counting security/etc) to the total amount spent on Obama's inauguration.

At least have the decency to compare the same thing, whomever you prefer.

Fox News is sometimes right, you know?

In the same spirit that sometimes even a blind squirrel can find a nut. Too bad that, this time, they didn't.

[AdminAssistant]

What I heard, though I could be wrong, is that the inauguration celebrations were paid for by private donations. The only taxpayer money that was spent was for the various military, police, and Secret Service folks. Which might be offset just a tad by the nearly 2 million people who came to DC for the inauguration - bought plane tickets, bought gas, hotel rooms, etc.

Not to mention the morale of the American people. You wanna talk about taxpayer waste? Let's talk about unneccessary war. Let's talk about corporate contracts and oil barons and Halliburton.

Fox News...well, there is no such thing as unbiased news, because reporters, commentators, editors, and producers are people and people are biased. That said, Fox News became very well known as nothing but the talking piece for the Bush Administration. Personally I watch CNN (that and Fox are my only 24 hour news options). I know it leans a little left, but it does attempt balance - I'd say the Situation Room and Lou Dobbs were both pretty balanced programs.

Back to subject at hand: I am glad he retook the oath, just to shut up the whiners. And that President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts kept their sense of humor about the whole thing.

[daleduke17]

Personally I watch CNN (that and Fox are my only 24 hour news options).

What about MSNBC? I don't watch much of it, but they are pretty close to 24 hour news (if your cable/satellite provider has it).

[AdminAssistant]

What about MSNBC? I don't watch much of it, but they are pretty close to 24 hour news (if your cable/satellite provider has it).

It doesn't, all my cable package has is Fox and CNN. I do like Keith Olberman (or whatever his name is) on MSNBC.

[BlaqueKatt]

It's basically an admission that some litigious Republican sore-losers are going to make a stink about every small, meaningless error for the next four years.

So the party you don't like are "sore losers" but the 8 years of "Bush stole the elections" was justified?

They're saying, "We don't want to spend the first year of the Obama Presidency sitting in court listening to testimony about the placement of the word faithfully, so we are forced to have this pointless do-over."

It's not pointless-it's been done over twice by two past presidents, it's a legal swearing in process-both screwed up, it had to be redone to be legal and binding.

It's a Democratic president, after all, so it seems that the next four years will involve him getting crushed by an onslaught of silly minutiae and baseless accusations.

And the Democrats are totally innocent of doing the same thing when their canidates lose

I remember forged documents being represented as factual on our last president regarding his military service-despite being written in MS Word.

[Evandril]

So the party you don't like are "sore losers" but the 8 years of "Bush stole the elections" was justified?

BIG difference between possible vote tampering and an innocent mistake while being sworn in.

[guywithashovel]

I thought this whole thing was kind of interesting. Though, it really is kind of sad that people would make such a big deal out of such a petty thing. Oh well, I guess that's politics.

As for Republicans being sore losers, well, they ARE sore losers. And so is virtually everyone else with a political opinion. None of us like it when our candidates lose. Also, you might as well get ready for the assaults on Obama's character and leadership style. People will always attack and riducule the president, regardless of who he is, what party he's from, or the quality of job he's doing. Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton was mocked mercilessly by the media, and he left office with a 64% approval rating, which (I think) is the highest of any president upon leaving office.

[Lady_Foxfire]

Re: the expensive inaugaration, I heard that the government bookmarks a certain amount of money (either 100,000 or 1 million dollars) for each inaugaration, and anything over that has to payed for through private donations. So even though this year's festivities were unusually pricy, no more tax money than usual was spent.